PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT (PEMS)

The editors are committed to meeting and upholding standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process and therefore we follow closely the industry association Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) that sets standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements.

The editors of the Proceedings are committed to:
  • making fair and unbiased decisions in depended from commercial consideration and ensure a fair and appropriate peer review process
  • adopting editorial policies that encourage maximum transparency and complete, honest reporting
  • pursuing authors, reviewers and editorial misconduct by taking all allegations and suspicions of misconduct seriously, but also giving the opportunity to authors to respond to accusations of serious misconduct.
  • guarding the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when needed and pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct
  • having appropriate policies in place for handling editorial conflict of interest.
Below is a summary of our key expectations of peer-reviewers and authors.

1. ETHICAL EXPECTATIONS

Reviewers’ responsibilities towards authors, editors and readers

Reviewers who realize that their expertise is limited have a responsibility to make their degree of competence clear to the editor. Reviewers need not be expert in every aspect of an article’s content, but they should accept an assignment only if they have adequate expertise to provide an authoritative assessment.

Reviewers should provide written, unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the work, together with the documented basis for the reviewer’s opinion (Link for Peer Review template)

Reviewer comments and conclusions should be based on an objective and impartial consideration of the facts, exclusive of personal or professional bias. They should acknowledge positive aspects of the material under review, identify negative aspects constructively, and indicate the improvements needed.

The submitted article should not be retained or copied, and the reviewers should not make any use of the data, arguments, or interpretations, unless they have the authors’ permission.

Reviewers that suspect misconduct will write in confidence to the editor.

Reviewers should be aware of any potential conflict of interest and should alert the editor to these, and if necessary, they will withdraw their services for that manuscript. The responsibilities towards readers are to ensure that the methods are adequately detailed to allow the reader to judge the scientific merit of the study design and be able to replicate the study, if desired and to ensure that the article cites all relevant work by other scientists.

Author/s responsibilities

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

All authors must take responsibility for the content of their paper. In cases of multidisciplinary nature of the research the individual contributions can be disclose in order to resolve the responsibility. Therefore, all authors need to confirm/assert that the manuscript (Link Author/s Statement):
  • Is a result of individual research conducted in an ethical and responsible manner that comply with the relevant legislation and to acknowledge and cite content reproduced from other sources
  • The results are presented, honestly and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation
  • The paper has not been published or accepted for publication elsewhere
Authors are expected to declare to the editors the relevant and potential conflict of interest (personal, commercial, political, academic or financial) that could be considered or viewed as exerting an undue influence on his or her duties at any stage during the publication process.

Authors are expected to obtain permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere.

The content offered in the Proceedings remains the intellectual property of the authors and their publishers respectively, in compliance with the Macedonian copyright legislation.
Authors who receive an editorial decision of revise-resubmit are expected to submit the revised paper within the time frame provided in the action letter. Failure to do so may rescind the invitation to revise the paper.

Authors are expected to return copy-edited versions and galley proofs and answer queries regarding the proofs by the provided deadlines. Failure to do so may result in the paper not appearing in the Proceedings as scheduled or in the article being published as is.

2. PROCEDURES FOR DEALING WITH UNETHICAL BEHAVIOUR

The general principle confirming misconduct is intention to cause others to regard as true that, which is not true. The editors will take reasonably responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper, in conjunction with the publisher. Such measures will generally include contacting the author of the manuscript or paper and giving due consideration of the respective complaint or claims made in case when editors judge that the misconduct is less serious.

But in cases the editors decide that the misconduct in question qualifies as serious misconduct they may also include further communications to the relevant institutions and research bodies, and if the complaint is upheld, the publication of a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other note, as may be relevant. Serious misconduct also implies that the employers of the accused will be notified. Every reported act of unethical publishing behavior will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication.

Outcomes (in increasing order of severity, they may be applied separately or in conjunction)
  • Letter of explanation and education for purpose of informing or educating the author or reviewer of the acceptable standards (in case of genuine misunderstanding of principles)
  • Letter of reprimand to the author or reviewer that points out the misconduct and contains a warning to future behavior
  • A formal letter to the author/s or reviewer/s department/employer
  • Formal retraction or withdrawal of a publication from the journal
  • Imposition of a formal embargo on contributions and refusal to accept future submissions from the person responsible for the misconduct, for a stated period